Pounding the pavement of London all week has hardened my feet while enlightening my mind. Neighborhoods that were familiar names on a map have become recognizable puzzle pieces I can place on a grid of memories after traveling three weeks around the city in the past year.
London is a loud city. Between road traffic, ambulance and emergency vehicle sirens, road construction and building construction, helicopters above and subway trains below, ebullient drunks and angry crazies, noise is a near constant factor of the tourist experience.
Museums and churches are quiet spaces for a respite from the city streets. There are many green spaces. Central London parks provide quiet moments when birds and squirrels are the loudest sounds, until city noise deafens the calming sounds of nature.
St. James’s Park London with view of Buckingham Palace
London has history waiting to be discovered around every corner, commemorated on building sites and through monuments in city parks.
Inside Westminster Abbey
Unfortunately no photography is allowed in the main rooms of Westminster Abbey.
Old door Westminster Abbey
Westminster Abbey is the resting place for many of England’s Kings and Queens buried within ornate tombs visitors can walk around and observe.
Bare bones displays reveal other past lives in other places around London like the Grant Museum of Zoology, Wellcome Collection and Hunterian Museum.
Grant Museum of Zoology – University College London
Darwin was here.
Charles Darwin 1809-1882 Naturalist lived in a house on this site 1838-1842 on what is now University College London.
Tate Museum
Inside the Tate Museum
London is a city replete with fine art. Some souls inanimately breathe life with resplendent beauty through the sheer will of the artist’s craft.
Eve – Robert Brock (1900) – Tate Museum of British Art
The Burghers of Calais – Auguste Rodin (1889) – Victoria Tower Gardens
Many of the images and monuments seen in London serve as reminders of dead souls.
Royal Artillery Memorial, Hyde Park Corner – Charles Sargeant Jagger (1925)
Just as in Paris in September, I walked London in full moonlight, briefly, when the clouds parted, and felt touched by the souls and spirits of others who occupied these same spaces beneath the stars in past and present lives.
Wellington Arch – Hyde Park Corner, London beneath the full moon.
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